tom

I found out on Saturday that my friend Tom had died. I found out because he had named me in his will, and his probate lawyer sent me a notification. If I wanted to be, I could be annoyed that no one had reached out to me; we had plenty of friends in common. But maybe in the age of facebook we just assume that everybody knows everything - I don’t know. Anyway, it’s a hard way to find out that someone you loved had died, a confusing way, I stared at the letter and both immediately understood and took a long time to believe.

Tom would hate that comma splice.

I think of Tom as my first real boss. That’s not actually true, so a better way to say it is, Tom was my first mentor. I told someone the other day that he was demanding and caring. I once made a careless error writing an article for the Kenyon Alumni Bulletin, placing Saddle River in New York because I hadn’t bothered to look it up. He stuck his head into my little office, next to his grand one (complete with fireplace), and said “Chris, when I lived in Princeton, Saddle River was in New Jersey.” I missed neither the sarcasm nor the point.

He believed in me, though, and he showed it by giving me ever-increasing responsibilities, being patient as I learned through mistakes. Well, maybe not always patient, but sticking with me. After several months, he moved me into the best office I’ll ever have, a huge bright space directly above his, with two windows overlooking Gambier's parallel Chase and Gaskin Avenues. Two of his staff had taken jobs elsewhere, and suddenly I was in the role of writing almost everything in the Alumni Bulletin, not just the obituaries and repackaged press releases but feature articles. I was way over my head. One of the things I learned from Tom was that over your head is exactly where you want to be in your career. As long as there’s someone showing you how to swim.

(At one point, I expressed to Tom that I didn't measure up to another writer who was working for him. He said, “I think you’re a better writer. You're just not as experienced.”)

All to say: These are the kinds of things a mentor does for you.

Our signature piece at Kenyon in those days was a brochure called Teachers, Mentors, Friends - TMF as we referred to it - whose theme came from a faculty member who described the process of evolving from the first encounter with a student to forming a lifelong relationship. I’m pretty sure it was Tom who developed that publication. We updated it every so often, and when I was asked to contribute a profile, it felt like I'd been admitted to the inner circle.

“Teachers, Mentors, Friends” was an effective way to market Kenyon at its best, but for Tom it was absolutely real. It was the quality of the College that endeared it so deeply to Tom. More than that, he lived it, with generations of Kenyon students and graduates and staff. With me.

I mentioned that two people had left his staff during the eight months or so I worked for Tom, which suddenly thrust me into that upstairs office. He was struggling at that point; he’d had a personal loss that he wasn’t sharing with anyone - didn’t share with me until a couple years later - and suddenly was without his two key staff members. I was back at Kenyon only a year after graduating, and seeing the sun shine brighter on faraway hills. I had been applying for various full-time jobs elsewhere - Muhlenberg College, Dickinson College, some place called Pomona out west - and he was advising me and encouraging me. Somewhere along the way I asked him if he'd consider me for Susan’s job, the one she had just left, and he said “I'd consider you for Mieke’s job” - news director, a much more prominent role.

Then Pomona invited me to go for an interview and I visited California for the first time in my life. For reasons unknown - probably a phone call with Tom - they offered me the job, and I thought long and hard about my choice, two roads diverging in front of me. I talked about it with everyone. Mostly, I remember a social gathering where Tom said something to the effect of, “We’d love to keep Chris, but we think he needs to get out of Gambier.”

He knew me better than I knew myself. More to the point: He had every reason to ask me to stay. If he had asked me to stay, I absolutely would have. I think he knew that, and that's why he never asked. It may be the greatest gift anyone has ever given me.